Get a profession/business account. If you want to act like an IT pro, pay for the type of service that IT Pros get. You will get someone on the line who isn't an idiot. And, you will get service guarantees. Costs 20-100% more. But, if your sanity is important it is worth it. Most ISPs have a different division for professional accounts. EG, Verizon/Time-Warner both have business services. You want cheap service? You get cheap call center support.

Pascal is straight forward, something missing from most modern language which hide substantial implicit variations in how the language behaves by handing behind syntax like Perl or impossibly verbose statements like VB. I worked with Delphi professionally and still think fondly of it.
Is a third-generation language, so is closer to system behavior, but is also a great teaching language which is sorely lacking from modern programming.

Know how to interview. Dye your hair. Keep relevant. Keep healthy. Have a niche. Have a plan b. Keep a good attitude.

The interview process will change. They know you have the ability to do the job. Questions are more around of do you give a shit, directly or indirectly.

Grey hair changes peoples mindsets about you, you can stop dying it once you are secure in the job. Or, just shave it all off. Dress young.

Bragging about cobol skills just annoys people and are next to worthless at most jobs. Know the latest do-hickey your co-workers are playing with, at least so you have something to talk about, even if your experience tells you the do-hickey is otherwise a waste of time.

Other people here talk about the niche.

Many older co-workers I know are incapable of doing the job because of bad exercise habits, energy levels, and other health issues. Stress oozes out and is sensed by others.

Have a plan b, a business on the side or simply make sure work is optional. Desperation makes for a strange interview and worse co-workers.

Most people are capable of doing any job, if they care. A bad attitude from a person skilled at dealing with others can be catastrophic. People have to pretend to care, especially for self-hypnosis. "If a prostitute can learn to pretend to enjoy her job, so can you."

Most people I have worked with older than 35 are failing at least one of these, if not several. Thing is, everyone fails a few of these, but they are more obvious in older workers. A bad eating habit is troublesome in a 20 yo, but nearly killer in a 40 yo. An attitude problem from someone skilled at manipulating others (because of years of experience being manipulated) can destroy a team.

There are many good tips here, mainly Linux distributions. But one tip I don't see, I would bring all of Wikipedia with me. Wikipedia can be downloaded, and then read either on a computer or in specialized e-readers. How to download Wikipedia . And, The Wikipedia Page.
Good luck.

VG knew seven years ago that nitrous was unscalable and randomly dangerous. They should have switched then to plans for spaceship three, skipped spaceship two. Instead, they aren't going to see either.

Mine do this at times. If I have been laying on one side, each side develops a noticeable red shift (more or less red), assuming because blood pressure is higher on one side than the other.... Takes a little while to go away.

People need both common ground and unique perspective. Some things everyone should know (what does that square icon for save really mean). Other things, we need each person to come at things uniquely (a system where all of the components react the same is a broken system, eg computer viruses on shared standard systems). It's easy to find inspiration in old technology which applies to technology today. EG, Tesla motors took an old forgotten engine design by Nick Tesla and implemented it in the modern age.

I will expose the kid to as much as they have the attention span for. Probably teach each kid different things. EG, one kid will learn basic even though it is outdated. Another will learn one will learn logo even though it is outdated. Both will learn HTML.

He's right, but in the wrong way. All currencies are doomed to fail. As long as people are willing to exchange something for something else, both have value. Most FIAT money has value because governments are willing to exchange it for taxes, so then it has value to almost everyone. When a government collapses, or people lose faith in it, it's currency becomes worthless. Seashells are no longer values as currency, but they once were. Gold/Silver have boom/bust cycles. BitCoin had value because of SilkRoad, and the silk-roaders were willing to accept it for... something. Frankly I'm surprised BitCoin still has value after SilkRoad's demise. If something significant replaces SilkRoad, BitCoin will remain valuable. Until then bitcoin's going on momentum. May crash soon, may not. Will crash eventually.

Lilypond is next to useless for techno, and drum machines, but for traditional performance music, composition, and experimentation iilypond is great. The program is backwards for art, in that music is dedcribed mathematically first then performed, rather than performed then described. But, lilypond can drive real performances, both as midi output and real sheet music, from child to orchestra level.

The Lilypond application has easy notation (at basic level), a good open source community, and can output both to nice printed sheetsheet music/pdfs and playable midi files.Â Lilypond is a great start in composing for people at least vaguely familiar with music notation and open source software.Â